


His Eyes and Ears

by SasuNarufan13



Category: Naruto
Genre: Doesn't follow epilogue, Dual POV, Established slash, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Permanent Injury, Set in the future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:15:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24107347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SasuNarufan13/pseuds/SasuNarufan13
Summary: Everyone is eager to find out just who the Hokage will choose as his guards and his advisor. They are stunned when only one name is revealed: Uchiha Sasuke.
Relationships: Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 58
Kudos: 412





	His Eyes and Ears

**Author's Note:**

> Author's note: Something random I came up with a few days ago. Don't ask me how: my brain's being weird.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Kishimoto owns it.
> 
> I hope you'll like this!

**His Eyes and Ears**

Every Kage had at least one personal assistant and at least three personal guards, if not more. That was always how it had been, for every country. Being a Kage was a lot of work, a lot of responsibility with people's lives sometimes literally depending on you, so it made sense that they would have their own personal assistants and guards. They were the closest to the Kage, the ones considered to be the most trustworthy.

When Uzumaki Naruto became Hokage, everyone was eager to find out who would be selected to become his assistant and his guards. Some were betting that Nara Shikamaru would become his personal assistant; that made sense given how smart the man was. He would be especially useful when it came to discussing tactics in the case of a new war – though everyone hoped it wouldn't come to a new war.

Others thought that perhaps it would be Haruno Sakura. She was level-headed and smart, proof of that being that she had been Tsunade's apprentice, taking over from her sensei once the older woman had retired. Haruno had also been in the same team as the Hokage for years, so it would make sense if he chose her.

For the personal guards, people were speculating that it might be Tenten because of her skills with a large range of weapons, together with Yamanaka Ino and Inuzuka Kiba or even Akimichi Chouji. Others thought that some ANBU would be selected instead, considering that this Hokage would be even a larger target because of his status as a Jinchuuriki.

Bets were being placed all over the village and everyone eagerly anticipated the moment that the Hokage would announce his selection. When he finally did, his decision sounded like a bolt from the blue, stunning the entire village – and everyone beyond once they got a wind of it.

Nara wasn't chosen. Neither was Haruno, nor Tenten, nor Yamanaka, Inuzuka or Akimichi. There were no masked ANBU flanking the Hokage as the man grinned and waved cheerfully before turning around and entering the Hokage Tower, disappearing into his office.

All bets were cancelled, because nobody had won. The entire betting pool had become useless at once, because the Hokage had only selected one person to help him.

_Uchiha Sasuke._

* * *

Uchiha Sasuke was just as famous as Uzumaki himself – and not entirely for the right reasons. Everyone growing up in Konoha knew about the Uchiha massacre, how one night the eldest son of the main family had snapped and had murdered everyone in cold blood, bar one: his younger brother.

The eldest brother had disappeared before the breaking of dawn, joining a terrorist organisation named Akatsuki which would years later start hunting down Jinchuuriki, and the younger brother, Sasuke, was left to fend for himself and grew up as an orphan.

Years later, Uchiha would betray the village in favour of joining Orochimaru, but then ended on their side somehow again during the war, fighting alongside Uzumaki to save the world. He'd received a full pardon after the war – though whether or not that had been entirely willing on the Council's part was uncertain – and had wandered across the world for a couple of years before returning to Konoha.

He and Uzumaki were basically attached to the hip the moment the black haired man had returned to the village. Whenever you saw one of them, you could be sure that the other one wouldn't be too far behind. When taking their closeness into consideration, it made sense that Uzumaki would choose Uchiha as both his assistant and his bodyguard. They knew each other better than anyone else, they had fought and bled together, and they were so in tune with each other that at times it was like watching a dance, so perfectly in sync were they.

Not everyone was happy with the Hokage's choice, naturally. Basically everyone had something to say about his decision and most of the remarks were scathing at best, downright poisonous at worst. A lot of them considered Uzumaki to be insane to give Uchiha that much power, pointing him as both the Hokage's assistant and his personal bodyguard – too much power for someone who hailed from a clan infamous for being power hungry.

There had been complaints officially drafted up, people insisting the Hokage would choose at least two more guards, but the blond man was adamant that only Uchiha would be in his service. Even the Council themselves had tried to meddle with the Hokage's decision, but as there was no law explicitly stating that the Hokage had to choose more than one person to serve him or her, the Council had to give up soon.

And so Uchiha remained the Hokage's sole assistant and protector.

* * *

The Hokage was a rather laidback person – something Yuki has heard Haruno sighing about more than once – but there were a couple of rules everyone had to adhere to, no matter who they were, no matter the rank they had.

You always had to knock on the door, no matter how urgent your message was. Then you had to wait until Uchiha would appear and once you had announced yourself, he would decide whether you could enter the office or not. If he didn't deem it necessary, he would just take the message and send you away. Under no circumstances were you allowed to barge into the office, not even if _"the entire bloody village is on fire, in which case, you'd be too late to announce it anyway,"_ Uchiha had sarcastically said when the rules had been laid out for the first time.

Not a lot of people were happy with the rules and several of them had tried evading them in the first couple of months. It never ended well and a couple of them had even been demoted as a result after they kept refusing to follow the orders.

Yuki herself had never had much issue with the rules. If the Hokage had made those rules, so be it; they needed to respect whatever rule or order the Hokage gave them. A rule which would give him privacy – at least that was what she assumed was the purpose of those rules – didn't sound that ridiculous. She'd seen the amount of paperwork the blond man had at times; she could very well believe he needed all the uninterrupted time he could get to complete all those forms.

Not everyone agreed with her, though. She'd heard the rumours as she passed through the corridors of the Hokage Tower whilst delivering paperwork and messages. About how Uchiha was clearly abusing his high position, about how he was isolating the Hokage for his own nefarious purposes. They all seemed to forget that Uzumaki was way too powerful to let himself be abused.

He was the Jinchuuriki of the Nine-Tailed Beast, the Hero of the Last Shinobi War. He had taken on the goddess of the chakra herself and had won – there was no way anyone would be able to force him to do something. If Uchiha was deciding who would be allowed to enter the office and who not, it was because Uzumaki let him do that.

She didn't know either man very well, barely even seeing them unless she needed to be at the Hokage's office or during official events, but she thought Uzumaki would do something if Uchiha was stepping out of line. He didn't appear to be someone who would let a person get away with abusing his power, even if that person was his best friend.

Besides, Uchiha wasn't that horrible. Rather standoffish, a bit cool perhaps, but he was always infallibly polite whenever she needed to deliver something to the Hokage. She liked to think she had come to earn at least some of his respect, because sometimes he would let her enter the office on her own.

Like now.

She knocked the door, waiting patiently for Uchiha to open it. Pressing the documents against her chest, she used her free hand to brush her hair back over her shoulders. She should probably think about getting it cut again; the length was starting to annoy her.

"Yes?"

A bit taken aback that the door didn't open yet, she called out, a tad insecure, "It's Tanaka Yuki, Uchiha-sama. I'm here to bring some documents to the Hokage."

There was a pause and she shuffled a bit uneasily with her feet, wondering what she should do if Uchiha wouldn't open the door. That had never happened before, so she had no clue as to how to proceed now.

"Come in."

That was the Hokage's voice and she blinked surprised, before slowly pushing the doorknob down, a bit wary now. She poked her head through the gap of the open door first, expecting to see Uchiha close. He wasn't.

Instead he was behind the Hokage's desk, nursing the stump of his left arm with an ice pack while the Hokage himself was fussing over him, one tanned hand and one bandaged one hovering above the ice pack.

"Ehm, are you okay, Uchiha-sama?" she asked uncertainly, hovering in the door.

Without looking at her, he grunted, "Yeah, fine. Just spilled some hot tea on myself."

The Hokage grimaced, looking a bit chagrined. His blond hair glinted in the weak sunlight when he bent his head closer to Uchiha's arm as if he wanted to inspect it closer.

"You can leave the documents on the desk," Uchiha said, lifting the ice package and looking at the red spot contemplatively.

"Erm, okay," she murmured and put the pile of documents on the right corner of the desk, making sure not to disturb the other piles.

"You can go now," Uchiha said calmly. "Close the door when you leave."

"Of course." She offered the both of them a quick bow and left the room.

Right before she closed the door completely, she heard the Hokage murmur, "How bad is it really, Sasuke?"

* * *

After two years of Uzumaki being the Hokage, the rules were pretty much integrated in everyone. After the first five people being demoted, the rest of them had finally understood that the rules weren't something one could take lightly or even joke about, and so they had all finally acquiesced to following them.

Well, that was what Yuki had assumed anyway, but one afternoon during a pretty chilly winter day told her that some people hadn't studied the rules that thoroughly.

She'd just arrived at the highest floor to deliver a message to the Hokage – Haruno wanting a meeting with him to discuss a new addition to the local hospital – and as always knocked on the door and waited.

As the seconds ticked by, there was no reply however and she furrowed her eyebrows. Then she shrugged and turned around, figuring the Hokage and Uchiha had stepped out to deal with something.

She was almost at the stairs when Akiyama ran up the stairs and past her, clutching a file in his hand. He looked like he'd been running all the way up here, judging from the red flush colouring his cheeks.

She saw him make a beeline for the Hokage's office and called out, "Oh wait, Akiyama, I don't think the Hokage is in his office now. I just knocked and didn't get a reply."

"That or maybe he's just ignoring you," he said, pushing his glasses back up his nose when they slipped down.

She rolled her eyes. For a reason she still didn't understand, Akiyama appeared to believe that he was way above her and anyone else, assured that he would soon be chosen to act as the Hokage's personal assistant. Why he still believed such a thing was possible when it was more than clear that Uzumaki wasn't planning on taking on another assistant was a mystery she'd like to solve one day.

"You know as well as I do that he never ignores anyone," she pointed out and sighed. "Just come back later, that's what I'm going to do as well."

"If he's not in his office, I might as well just drop it off already. That way he sees it when he gets back," Akiyama said confidently.

"Akiyama, you know the rules," she warned him, a bit alarmed when he nonetheless grabbed the doorknob.

He glanced at her annoyed. "Those rules only count when he's in the office. You just said he isn't in, so it'll be fine," he sniffed and pushed open the door before she could stop him.

A couple of things happened all at once. Akiyama stepped smugly inside, before calling out a surprised, "Oh, Hokage-sama, you are here after all?"

At the same time she heard a bit off curse, a yelped "Who the hell are you?!" and a sharp whistling noise, swiftly followed by Akiyama being thrown straight out of the office, slamming into the wall, as a bright blue ball sizzled out into the air.

 _The Hokage's Rasengan_ , her mind supplied as she gaped at the sight of Akiyama dropping down onto the floor, completely dishevelled and his shirt torn right in the middle of his chest. Before she could even take a step forwards, Uchiha suddenly materialised in front of the Hokage's office and his eyes were bleeding red and purple; his face drawn back with so much rage, she stumbled back instinctively, even though he wasn't even looking at her.

All his attention instead was focused on Akiyama, who was scrambling up, coughing. When he looked up and locked eyes with Uchiha, he froze; his features quickly paling.

"Tanaka-san, what are you doing here?" Uchiha asked. His voice was deadly calm, but he still had Akiyama pinned straight against the wall with the sheer rage in his gaze alone. One eye had black lines swirling and locking into each other, turning into the Mangekyou Sharingan, while the other eye flashed purple through the lock of black hair covering it.

She licked her lips, her mouth as dry as Suna's desert all of a sudden. "I – I was supposed to bring a message from Haruno-sensei to – to the Hokage, Uchiha-sama."

"And did you deliver that message?" He still wasn't looking at her, but when she briefly glanced down, she swallowed when she noticed his hand resting on his katana.

"N-no, Uchiha-sama."

"Why not?"

Sweat broke out, prickling the back of her neck. "Be-because when I – I knocked, there was no reply. So I thought the Hokage wasn't in his office and – and decided to come back later," she stammered, clenching the edges of her shirt tightly.

The air in the corridor was starting to feel incredibly oppressive, filled with the ice cold rage she could practically feel pouring off the older man as he surveyed the trembling form of Akiyama.

"In other words, you followed the rules," he stated monotonously.

She jerked her head down in a nod, not daring to say something more.

"I'm glad to see that at least some of you do possess a brain with a good working memory," he said icily. "I'll have to ask you to return with your message in a couple of hours, Tanaka-san. You're dismissed for now."

"Of course, Uchiha-sama," she muttered and bowed quickly, daring to glance at the open door before she swiftly turned around and hurried down the stairs, wincing.

She did _not_ want to be in Akiyama's shoes right now.

* * *

She didn't see Akiyama around for three whole weeks and when he finally did show up, he never dared to pull such a stunt again.

She would have felt sorry for him, but well, the rules were clear. It was his own fault that he had thought he had been above those rules.

* * *

"You know, if you ever get tired of this, I'd understand."

Naruto's words both came out of the blue and yet they didn't, because Sasuke had been anticipating this particular conversation ever since he'd put that arrogant bastard in his place four days ago. He'd been annoyed with himself too; the one time he wasn't present in the office, of course some knucklehead would try to bypass the rules.

"Do you think I would keep doing this if I was tired of it?" He raised an eyebrow, closing the last file he'd been working on.

Well, the last file of the day. He eyed the remaining pile of documents with some irritation. Sometimes he really believed that people were just inventing documents in order to screw over the Hokage.

Naruto shrugged, his eyes cast down as his bandaged fingers fiddled with the necklace Tsunade had gifted him years ago. "I know you didn't sign up for this when you came back," he said in a low voice.

"Nobody signs up for this enormous amount of paperwork," Sasuke said dryly. "Do you think Gaara has this much shit to sign too, or is Konoha just being special again?"

Ignoring the barely veiled sneer towards the village, Naruto looked up and said, "I'm just saying: you don't have to stay if you don't want to."

The dark haired man sighed softly and looked at the other one. He studied the way the blond man sat in his desk chair, his shoulders uncharacteristically slumped; his entire form radiating misery. He looked at the way bright blue eyes were wandering around the office, never settling onto one place, sliding over Sasuke unseeingly.

Unseeingly because _Naruto couldn't see_. Not anymore. Hadn't been able to for nearly three years now.

One of their last major fights, a couple of months before the announcement had come that he would become the next Hokage, had seen Naruto struck with a rare jutsu; one which sent tiny thunderbolts straight through the pupils, destroying the sight in just a couple of seconds. He and Sasuke had managed to win the fight regardless, but by then it had been too late. With Kyuubi unable to reverse the effects of the jutsu, Naruto was doomed to spend the rest of his life in eternal darkness.

Blind. Without any chance of gaining his eyesight back.

 _There was a certain kind of irony at play here_ , Sasuke mused as he rose up from the chair and walked around the desk.

As an Uchiha, more specifically as someone who had developed the Sharingan, he had lived nearly his entire life with the notion that one day he might go blind if he used his Sharingan too much. The operation with his brother's eyes had completely extinguished that notion; now, no matter how many times he would use his Sharingan, he wouldn't risk blindness anymore. Bar someone actually stabbing out his eyes, his eyesight was ensured for the rest of his life.

And then you had Naruto. A powerful Jinchuuriki, capable of healing nearly every injury. It was cruel irony that _he_ of all people would be struck by blindness.

They made it work, though. Neither of them were quitters and they had found a way for Naruto to still obtain his dream even with his lasting injury. It was their little secret and Sasuke was hellbent on making sure that nobody would ever find out just how vulnerable their Hokage was now.

"I've decided a long time ago that I'm not leaving you," Sasuke said and grabbed Naruto's hands, tangling their fingers together. "You told me you would die with me – I tell you that I will _live with you_. I'm your eyes and your ears, remember?"

"I remember." Naruto's smile wobbled and his fingers spasmed around Sasuke's. "I just don't want you to feel obligated to stay with me because I - "

He cut him off with a fierce, punishing kiss, eliciting a startled moan out of the blond before the man melted underneath his touch, kissing him eagerly back.

Sasuke pulled back before things would become too intense and said roughly, "Don't _ever_ think you're an obligation to me. I'm staying with you because I want that, because I want _you_ , usuratonkachi. Blindness or not, that doesn't matter to me. My place is at your side for however long you'll want me."

"Okay, okay," Naruto murmured and his smile was a tad lighter, his blue eyes just a bit brighter, when he slipped his hands over Sasuke's arms, up until his shoulders to his neck. He cupped Sasuke's face and kissed him, easily finding his mouth even when he could no longer see.

They made it work, the both of them. They had their ups and downs, probably more than most couples would ever go through, but that didn't matter.

He was Naruto's eyes and ears. Naruto was his heart and his light. They were the perfect team together. If Naruto needed to hear that, he would tell him over and over again, as many times as he needed to hear that Sasuke would be at his side.

Until the very end.

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> AN2: I don't know how I came up with this plot, I really don't know *shrugs*
> 
> Please leave your thoughts behind in a review; should you spot any mistakes, please point them out to me.
> 
> I hope to see you all back in my future stories! Please take care of yourselves and stay safe!
> 
> Cuddles
> 
> Melissa


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